U.S. Servicemen Thwart Jihadist Attack In France

by JASmius



Well, Alek Skarlatos and Spencer Stone can probably kiss their military careers goodbye for their "Islamophobic" actions, but I'm sure they and civilian Anthony Sadler will have no regrets:

The struggle was brief, bloody and chaotic.

The high-speed train was zipping from Amsterdam to Paris on Friday when a shirtless man emerged from the bathroom — a rifle slung over his shoulder, witnesses said.

A French passenger and three Americans — a civilian, an Air Force member and a National Guard member — jumped into action. They quickly tackled him, possibly averting a massacre aboard the train.

By the time the suspect was subdued, three people had nonlife-threatening injuries, said Anthony Blondeau, a spokesman for Arras city in northern France, where the train pulled up after the incident and the suspect was arrested. One of the Americans was among the injured.

The train staff, of course, turned and fled like sheep when the trouble started, barricading themselves in their staff room and leaving the passengers to fend for themselves.  Boy, some things never change, do they?

For those who didn't want to make assumptions about the motivations of the gunmen, you really needn't have bothered with such restraint:

The gunman overpowered by passengers on a train in France is known to European authorities as a suspected Islamist militant if the identity he has given is correct, France's interior minister said on Saturday. Two people were wounded in the struggle to subdue the Kalashnikov-toting attacker aboard the high-speed train from Amsterdam to Paris on Friday. Two U.S. servicemen, one of whom suffered knife wounds, were among the passengers who stopped the gunman.

Cazeneuve said the attacker's identity was not confirmed, but if he was telling the truth "he is a twenty-six-year-old man of Moroccan nationality identified by the Spanish authorities to French intelligence services in February 2014 because of his connections to the radical Islamist movement".

The man Spanish authorities had under surveillance left Spain for France in 2014, traveled to Syria, and then back to France, a Spanish counter-terrorism source said on Saturday. [emphasis added]

Hmmm; remind me what jihadist group controls most of Syria again?  I'm sure it'll come to me.....

Another interesting tidbit is that the jihadist in question may have had connections to a group involved in a suspected Islamist shooting in Belgium in January - which the Belgian government has subsequently confirmed.

The incident has the flavor of "Let's roll" from Flight 93 combined with Cade Courtley's Surviving Disaster series, doesn't it?  Pity American servicepeople can't be present at every such would-be jihadist strike, even if it would destroy their careers.  The lives they save would, they'd all agree to a man (or woman), be more than worth it.


UPDATE (8/24): There'll never be any expression of appreciation from their own president, but Messrs. Skarlatos, Stone, and Sadler are being deservedly hailed by the French.